Confucius Wisdom | Tasting baijiu with David Zhou

By Jim Boyce | David Zhou of Confucius Wisdom has supported World Baijiu Day since its founding in 2015 and we finally managed to meet yesterday in Beijing. We put our time to good use by sampling some baiju.

Originally from Beijing, Zhou has spent the last 20 years in the United States. He moved there for graduate school in Michigan, then eventually found himself as a large IT company director before launching his own businesses in that field. But what really interested him was to help popularize baijiu in the U.S.

He started his Confucius Wisdom project eight years ago and, after sourcing his baijiu, figuring out the logistics, and so on, sold his first bottle in 2012 in Washington, D.C.

“I sold out, I sold a container,” he told me, seeming surprised even now by how quickly it happened. He said logistics issues meant it took nearly a year to replenish his stock.

Zhou also sells Confucius Wisdom, an 80-proof blend of light and strong aroma baijius, in Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and North Carolina. It’s priced from $30 and $35. He also has smaller format bottles that do well in terms of restaurant sales.

“It retails for 9 or 10 dollars and is sold in restaurants for 15 or 20,” he says. “It’s a good size, people can share it.”

Zhou also has a stronger 112-proof baijiu called Emperor’s Sword.

We did our baijiu tasting at Q Bar, one of the event partners this year. We started, of course, with Confucius Wisdom and a new blend on which he is working. Both were palatable, the former lighter and slightly viscous and the latter more pungent but crisp and with a nice licorice finish. We then tried byejoe, Taizi, Yi Dan Liang and Yi Mu Quan before finishing off with more Confucius Wisdom.

Confucius Wisdom will be one of the baijius featured at this year’s World Baijiu Day party at Q Bar. And perhaps next year there will be another addition: one of the infusions that Zhou is working on: